Indonesia: UNTEA Party

The first Europeans to sight New Guinea
were two 16th century Portuguese sea captains who were so unimpressed
that they did not even bother to claim it for their King. Second
largest island in the world (after Greenland), it was a tangle of
tropical jungle inhabited by mosquitoes, crocodiles, and man-eating
savages. In 1828 The Netherlands claimed western New Guinea, ruled it
benevolently but with distant interest; in the words of one observer,
it "became a sort of Dutch hobby." Last week, as the Dutch finally
abandoned their costly hobby, the place seemed to have changed
remarkably little.